Friday, April 21, 2017
The Invisible Monument at UC Berkeley
An excerpt from 99percentinvisible.org -
Be sure to check out the podcast that accompanies this article. It came be found on the bottom of the page.
The Invisible Monument to Free Speech
“This soil and the air space extending above it shall not be a part of any nation and shall not be subject to any entity’s jurisdiction.”
http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-22-the-invisible-monument-to-free-speech/
From Atlas Obscura - http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/free-speech-monument
From RoadsideAmerica - http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/30278
Be sure to check out the podcast that accompanies this article. It came be found on the bottom of the page.
The Invisible Monument to Free Speech
“This soil and the air space extending above it shall not be a part of any nation and shall not be subject to any entity’s jurisdiction.”
http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-22-the-invisible-monument-to-free-speech/
From Atlas Obscura - http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/free-speech-monument
From RoadsideAmerica - http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/30278
From Prisoner to Law Professor
From the Washington Post -
He robbed banks and went to prison. His time there put him on track for a new job: Georgetown law professor.
By Susan Svrluga
Hopwood’s new job as a tenure-track faculty member at the Georgetown University Law Center is only the latest improbable twist in a remarkable life: In the last 20 years, he has robbed banks in small towns in Nebraska, spent 11 years in federal prison, written a legal petition for a fellow inmate so incisive that the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, done that again, earned undergraduate and law degrees and extremely competitive clerkships, written a book, married his hometown crush and started a family.
But this could be his most compelling role yet. His time in prison gave him a searing understanding of the impact of sentencing and the dramatic growth in incarceration in the United States, an unusual perspective on the law that allows him to see things other lawyers overlook. And he takes the job at a time when criminal-justice issues have real urgency, from lawmakers to protesters to students.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/04/21/bank-robber-turned-georgetown-law-professor-is-just-getting-started-on-his-goals/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_georgetown1100am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.dd54e4087b44
He robbed banks and went to prison. His time there put him on track for a new job: Georgetown law professor.
By Susan Svrluga
Hopwood’s new job as a tenure-track faculty member at the Georgetown University Law Center is only the latest improbable twist in a remarkable life: In the last 20 years, he has robbed banks in small towns in Nebraska, spent 11 years in federal prison, written a legal petition for a fellow inmate so incisive that the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, done that again, earned undergraduate and law degrees and extremely competitive clerkships, written a book, married his hometown crush and started a family.
But this could be his most compelling role yet. His time in prison gave him a searing understanding of the impact of sentencing and the dramatic growth in incarceration in the United States, an unusual perspective on the law that allows him to see things other lawyers overlook. And he takes the job at a time when criminal-justice issues have real urgency, from lawmakers to protesters to students.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/04/21/bank-robber-turned-georgetown-law-professor-is-just-getting-started-on-his-goals/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_georgetown1100am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.dd54e4087b44
Fixed
From Full Frontal Samantha Bee -
https://twitter.com/FullFrontalSamB/status/854835411486740487/photo/1
https://twitter.com/FullFrontalSamB/status/854835411486740487/photo/1
History Lesson - African-American Female Activists
From Upworthy -
They're here: photos released of 8 female activists that history almost forgot.
JAMES GAINES
In 2013, the Library of Congress got a hold of the photograph collection of William Henry Richards, a prominent African-American leader who taught at Howard University from 1890 to 1928.
In the collection, they found portraits of the young, badass female African-American activists whom Richards worked alongside.
http://www.upworthy.com/theyre-here-photos-released-of-8-female-activists-that-history-almost-forgot?c=upw1&u=6861cbea6edfdfe5a709ee39ad3c14b64135e61f
They're here: photos released of 8 female activists that history almost forgot.
JAMES GAINES
In 2013, the Library of Congress got a hold of the photograph collection of William Henry Richards, a prominent African-American leader who taught at Howard University from 1890 to 1928.
In the collection, they found portraits of the young, badass female African-American activists whom Richards worked alongside.
http://www.upworthy.com/theyre-here-photos-released-of-8-female-activists-that-history-almost-forgot?c=upw1&u=6861cbea6edfdfe5a709ee39ad3c14b64135e61f
Prison Reform With Potential
An excerpt from the Los Angeles Times -
'I took someone’s life — now I am giving back': In California's prisons, inmates teach each other how to start over
By Jazmine Ulloa
The men Daniel Hopper teaches about drug and alcohol abuse are serving sentences of 10 years to life at a state prison tucked away in the Vaca Mountains of Northern California. They grew up in different places, most of them under difficult circumstances: dangerous schools and neighborhoods, fathers behind bars, brothers in gangs.
Hopper, a tall 35-year-old with cropped black hair, rectangular glasses and piercing wit, can relate to them on a level few others can. He is doing time for killing another teenager when he was 17 and a San Diego gang leader.
“Going to prison was one of the best things that ever happened to me,” Hopper said. It forced him to face what he did — and live differently, he said.
A largely self-educated inmate who had resigned himself to dying within prison walls, Hopper became a substance abuse counselor through the Offender Mentor Certification Program. Now, with Proposition 57 ushering in a massive overhaul of the state’s prison parole system, the program could bring him and his students closer to an early release that some of them thought they would never see.
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-prop-57-prison-programs-20170420-htmlstory.html
'I took someone’s life — now I am giving back': In California's prisons, inmates teach each other how to start over
By Jazmine Ulloa
The men Daniel Hopper teaches about drug and alcohol abuse are serving sentences of 10 years to life at a state prison tucked away in the Vaca Mountains of Northern California. They grew up in different places, most of them under difficult circumstances: dangerous schools and neighborhoods, fathers behind bars, brothers in gangs.
Hopper, a tall 35-year-old with cropped black hair, rectangular glasses and piercing wit, can relate to them on a level few others can. He is doing time for killing another teenager when he was 17 and a San Diego gang leader.
“Going to prison was one of the best things that ever happened to me,” Hopper said. It forced him to face what he did — and live differently, he said.
A largely self-educated inmate who had resigned himself to dying within prison walls, Hopper became a substance abuse counselor through the Offender Mentor Certification Program. Now, with Proposition 57 ushering in a massive overhaul of the state’s prison parole system, the program could bring him and his students closer to an early release that some of them thought they would never see.
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-prop-57-prison-programs-20170420-htmlstory.html
Undoing Years of Progress
An excerpt from ProPublica -
DeVos Pick to Head Civil Rights Office Once Said She Faced Discrimination for Being White
Candice Jackson’s intellectual journey raises questions about how actively she will investigate allegations of unfair treatment of minorities and women.
by Annie Waldman
The new acting head of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights once complained that she experienced discrimination because she is white.
As an undergraduate studying calculus at Stanford University in the mid-1990s, Candice Jackson “gravitated” toward a section of the class that provided students with extra help on challenging problems, she wrote in a student publication. Then she learned that the section was reserved for minority students.
“I am especially disappointed that the University encourages these and other discriminatory programs,” she wrote in the Stanford Review. “We need to allow each person to define his or her own achievements instead of assuming competence or incompetence based on race.”
https://www.propublica.org/article/devos-candice-jackson-civil-rights-office-education-department
DeVos Pick to Head Civil Rights Office Once Said She Faced Discrimination for Being White
Candice Jackson’s intellectual journey raises questions about how actively she will investigate allegations of unfair treatment of minorities and women.
by Annie Waldman
The new acting head of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights once complained that she experienced discrimination because she is white.
As an undergraduate studying calculus at Stanford University in the mid-1990s, Candice Jackson “gravitated” toward a section of the class that provided students with extra help on challenging problems, she wrote in a student publication. Then she learned that the section was reserved for minority students.
“I am especially disappointed that the University encourages these and other discriminatory programs,” she wrote in the Stanford Review. “We need to allow each person to define his or her own achievements instead of assuming competence or incompetence based on race.”
https://www.propublica.org/article/devos-candice-jackson-civil-rights-office-education-department
Thursday, April 20, 2017
Rang True For Me
I was raised in the segregated South, in rural China, Texas.
I entered first grade in 1962. We didn't have kindergarten back then. The school I attended housed first thru twelfth grades. My oldest brother Willie was fourteen years older than me and already in the military by the time I was school age. My second brother Forrest was a junior, and my third brother Terry was in second grade, and we were all in the same building.
Everyone in that school was black - the principal, the teachers, and the support staff. The advantages of that world were that at an early age we mingled with professionals who looked like us. People who had a vested interest in our learning and who understood the importance of teaching us so much more than just the three R's - reading writing and arithmetic. They, along with our parents, taught us how to navigate our segregated world so that we'd live to tell about it.
That black oasis ended when I entered seventh grade and the school was integrated. I went from having all black teachers for my first six years of schooling to having just one black teacher for the next six years. All of the black staff from our school were fired, except for one. The educational, social and economic impact of that decision was enormous.
In our push for integration, the assumption was if we were in the same class as white kids, we'd get the same education. That was incredibly naive thinking.
The teachers' role in students' achievement was/is HUGE. When teachers believe in their students, even when they don't believe in themselves, it makes a tremendous difference. Does the teacher have to be black to teach black kids? No, but it's a value-added endeavor when the teachers and students can relate to each other on a deeper level.
So, this author's comments and analysis in the article below rang true for me.
I understood them completely because I lived them.
~~~~~~~~~~
An excerpt from the New York Times -
Where Did All the Black Teachers Go?
By BRENT STAPLES
When black schools were shuttered or absorbed, celebrated black principals were demoted or fired. By some estimates, nearly a third of African-American teachers lost their jobs. Those who survived the purge were sometimes selected on the basis of a lighter skin color that made them more palatable to white communities.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/20/opinion/where-did-all-the-black-teachers-go.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region®ion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region
I entered first grade in 1962. We didn't have kindergarten back then. The school I attended housed first thru twelfth grades. My oldest brother Willie was fourteen years older than me and already in the military by the time I was school age. My second brother Forrest was a junior, and my third brother Terry was in second grade, and we were all in the same building.
Everyone in that school was black - the principal, the teachers, and the support staff. The advantages of that world were that at an early age we mingled with professionals who looked like us. People who had a vested interest in our learning and who understood the importance of teaching us so much more than just the three R's - reading writing and arithmetic. They, along with our parents, taught us how to navigate our segregated world so that we'd live to tell about it.
That black oasis ended when I entered seventh grade and the school was integrated. I went from having all black teachers for my first six years of schooling to having just one black teacher for the next six years. All of the black staff from our school were fired, except for one. The educational, social and economic impact of that decision was enormous.
In our push for integration, the assumption was if we were in the same class as white kids, we'd get the same education. That was incredibly naive thinking.
The teachers' role in students' achievement was/is HUGE. When teachers believe in their students, even when they don't believe in themselves, it makes a tremendous difference. Does the teacher have to be black to teach black kids? No, but it's a value-added endeavor when the teachers and students can relate to each other on a deeper level.
So, this author's comments and analysis in the article below rang true for me.
I understood them completely because I lived them.
~~~~~~~~~~
An excerpt from the New York Times -
Where Did All the Black Teachers Go?
By BRENT STAPLES
When black schools were shuttered or absorbed, celebrated black principals were demoted or fired. By some estimates, nearly a third of African-American teachers lost their jobs. Those who survived the purge were sometimes selected on the basis of a lighter skin color that made them more palatable to white communities.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/20/opinion/where-did-all-the-black-teachers-go.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region®ion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region
Ouch!
An excerpt from Vox -
Henry Kissinger just damned Jared Kushner with the faintest of praise
By Zack Beauchamp
The entire thing is the most lukewarm of lukewarm praise, about as generic and uninspired as it comes. One academic I follow on Twitter called it “the letter of recommendation you never want an advisor to send,” which sounds about right.
http://www.vox.com/world/2017/4/20/15373668/henry-kissinger-jared-kushner-time-100
Henry Kissinger just damned Jared Kushner with the faintest of praise
By Zack Beauchamp
The entire thing is the most lukewarm of lukewarm praise, about as generic and uninspired as it comes. One academic I follow on Twitter called it “the letter of recommendation you never want an advisor to send,” which sounds about right.
http://www.vox.com/world/2017/4/20/15373668/henry-kissinger-jared-kushner-time-100
How TED Became TED
An excerpt from Wired -
The Oral History of TED, a Club for the Rich That Became a Global Phenomenon
By Emma Grey Ellis
BEFORE ITS 2,000-PLUS videos had been viewed 8 billion times, TED was an annual conference for wealthy eggheads. Starting in February 1984, 1,000 people who could afford to pay $4,000 (and up) would gather in Monterey, California, to hear 18-minute lectures on technology, entertainment, and design. (TED, get it?) Then, in 2006, TED started posting the presentations on its website, transforming a once-exclusive conference into a viral think-piece factory. As TED kicks off its 33rd conference this spring, here’s how the talks went global.
https://www.wired.com/2017/04/an-oral-history-of-ted-talks/
The Oral History of TED, a Club for the Rich That Became a Global Phenomenon
By Emma Grey Ellis
BEFORE ITS 2,000-PLUS videos had been viewed 8 billion times, TED was an annual conference for wealthy eggheads. Starting in February 1984, 1,000 people who could afford to pay $4,000 (and up) would gather in Monterey, California, to hear 18-minute lectures on technology, entertainment, and design. (TED, get it?) Then, in 2006, TED started posting the presentations on its website, transforming a once-exclusive conference into a viral think-piece factory. As TED kicks off its 33rd conference this spring, here’s how the talks went global.
https://www.wired.com/2017/04/an-oral-history-of-ted-talks/
Jordan Gets An Undeserved Pass
An excerpt from the Guardian -
Craig Hodges: 'Jordan didn't speak out because he didn't know what to say'
He was one of the NBA’s finest sharpshooters and a two-time champion alongside Michael Jordan, but was run out of the league for his outspoken views. A quarter of a century on, Craig Hodges is still fighting the good fight
By Donald McRae
Hodges has told his compelling life story with fiery passion, looping around a cast of characters stretching from Jordan, Magic Johnson and Phil Jackson back to Muhammad Ali, Arthur Ashe and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, before returning to the present. Sport and politics are entwined again in a country where Donald Trump is president and Colin Kaepernick remains locked outside football as an unsigned free agent who had the temerity to sink to one knee during the national anthem. And teenage African American boys, just like they were when Hodges was trying to shake up the NBA, are still being gunned down.
Hodges always wanted to voice his opposition to injustice. In June 1991, before the first game of the NBA finals between the Bulls and the LA Lakers, Hodges tried to convince Jordan and Magic Johnson that both teams should stage a boycott. Rodney King, an African American, had been beaten brutally by four white policemen in Los Angeles three months earlier – while 32% of the black population in Illinois lived below the poverty line.
As he writes in his new book Longshot: The Triumphs and Struggles of an NBA Freedom Fighter, Hodges told the sport’s two leading players that the Bulls and Lakers should sit out the opening game, so “we would stand in solidarity with the black community while calling out racism and economic inequality in the NBA, where there were no black owners and almost no black coaches despite the fact that 75% of the players in the league were African American”.
Jordan told Hodges he was “crazy” while Johnson said: “That’s too extreme, man.”
“What’s happening to our people in this country is extreme,” Hodges replied.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/apr/20/craig-hodges-michael-jordan-nba-chicago-bulls?CMP=oth_b-aplnews_d-1
Craig Hodges: 'Jordan didn't speak out because he didn't know what to say'
He was one of the NBA’s finest sharpshooters and a two-time champion alongside Michael Jordan, but was run out of the league for his outspoken views. A quarter of a century on, Craig Hodges is still fighting the good fight
By Donald McRae
Hodges has told his compelling life story with fiery passion, looping around a cast of characters stretching from Jordan, Magic Johnson and Phil Jackson back to Muhammad Ali, Arthur Ashe and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, before returning to the present. Sport and politics are entwined again in a country where Donald Trump is president and Colin Kaepernick remains locked outside football as an unsigned free agent who had the temerity to sink to one knee during the national anthem. And teenage African American boys, just like they were when Hodges was trying to shake up the NBA, are still being gunned down.
Hodges always wanted to voice his opposition to injustice. In June 1991, before the first game of the NBA finals between the Bulls and the LA Lakers, Hodges tried to convince Jordan and Magic Johnson that both teams should stage a boycott. Rodney King, an African American, had been beaten brutally by four white policemen in Los Angeles three months earlier – while 32% of the black population in Illinois lived below the poverty line.
As he writes in his new book Longshot: The Triumphs and Struggles of an NBA Freedom Fighter, Hodges told the sport’s two leading players that the Bulls and Lakers should sit out the opening game, so “we would stand in solidarity with the black community while calling out racism and economic inequality in the NBA, where there were no black owners and almost no black coaches despite the fact that 75% of the players in the league were African American”.
Jordan told Hodges he was “crazy” while Johnson said: “That’s too extreme, man.”
“What’s happening to our people in this country is extreme,” Hodges replied.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/apr/20/craig-hodges-michael-jordan-nba-chicago-bulls?CMP=oth_b-aplnews_d-1
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